Monday, September 22, 2008

Pete and Chab's Excellent Adventure: Underway!

The force that the reporter describes as "a concrete deterrent force that any power that tries to interfere in the internal or external affairs of Russia must deal with" gets underway:

Navy Spokesman Captain 1st Rank Igor' Dygalo describes the deployment as a fulfillment of the vision as conceived by Navy CinC Admiral Vladimir Vysotskiy of the Navy returning to forward deployments and as having nothing to do with events in Georgia since both the deployment and the exercises with Venezuela had been planned months in advance.

Besides Venezuela, the task force will visit Tartus, Syria, which makes sense given this a few weeks ago. I assume that one of the other countries with whom the Russians will hold joint exercises will be Syria.

The reporter also noted that immediately upon getting underway in the Barents, NATO in the form of a P-3 Orion took notice, snapping pictures, making video and carrying out electronic reconnaissance. The reporter expects NATO to surveil the battle group every step of the way during the deployment.